Front Teeth and New Year Wishes
The Queen called 1992 her ‘Annus Horribilis’, let’s hope 2020 is a better one for us.
Back then, it was all happening for The Queen. A huge number of royal scandals, involving three of her four children and their partners - current, past and ahem, well, casual. Then just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, a massive fire at the castle in Windsor topped off her Annus Horribilis.
Issues have got to be pretty big to keep politics off the front page or out of the lead story on the TV news. This year we’ve had three concerns so enormous and life-changing that the pollies have barely got a look in (except for their inaction in some cases). I’ll mention all three of them at once, then give editorial to each of them individually. The drought, the Climate and the Fires.
A lovely young lady I know lives out near Louth, an hour further on past Bourke. Her family has a total of about 200000 acres out there (yep, you read that right), and putting it mildly, there’s not a lot of feed out there for the animals, let alone any crops. She said they are feeding the stock they have left on cotton seed, and when I naively asked if that’s what was growing on their farm, she said “no, it gets trucked in each week from Perth”. Sigh. The vicious cycle of no water, no crops, no feed, no stock, no money, no planting looks to have no end.
In the past fortnight, we had a day in Orange where the top temp was just 11C … in December. When I checked the weather App on my phone, it actually said “feels like -0.1,” no joke. Then, just a week later, we broke the all-time December heat record by cracking out a temp of 35.7C. Those who deny climate change will put this down to coincidence or fate, but it’s just ridiculous to ignore or fail to recognise the damage we’ve done, and that’s it’s getting hard to fix. Antonio Guterres, secretary general of the United Nations said last week that “it is almost too late” to do anything, and that if we don’t take radical, bolder action, a logical conclusion is that “we are doomed.” From plastic bags and straws, to electric cars and short showers – it’s up to all of us. The man upstairs must look down at 16 year old Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, Greta Thunberg and her crusade and ask “why is she doing more than all of the leaders?” Sigh.
Then there’s the fires. Yep, the drought and the Climate Change seem inherently linked to our current woes with bushfires. And, like us in the Central West, if you’re not directly affected by a raging fire, then the pollution levels have everyone hiding indoors for days on end. Who would have believed we’d see everyday people wearing masks, like in China and India, when going to the shops. The ‘Air Quality’ rating in Orange hit a ridiculously dangerous 295, just shy of ‘hazardous’, when out here it’s normally always under 50, with a rating of ‘good’. Sigh.
Like the kid who said “All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth”. Let’s just pray for rain, do our bit for the environment, buy a bale and a parma, and maybe drop a dollar in the bucket next time you see the Firies taking up a collection (shoutout firefighters, you are awesome).
Ok, in an ideal world, the next time you’re reading this column we’ll have had a couple of inches of rain and our Annus Horribilis will be over. Merry Christmas and (hopefully) a Very Happy 2020 for those who deserve one.